The story of this great battle and great victory—for it is really that—cannot be told in a few lines, and it is too soon yet to give exact details of the fighting. But from the reports that have now come in from all parts of the battle front it is good enough to know that everywhere our men have succeeded with astonishing rapidity, and that the plan of battle has been fulfilled almost to the letter and to the time-table. The New-Zealanders reached and captured Messines in an hour and forty minutes after the moment of attack, in spite of heavy fighting in German trenches, where many of the enemy were killed. Irish troops, Nationalists and Ulstermen, not divided in politics on the battlefield, but vying with each other in courage and self-sacrifice, stormed their way up to Wytschaete, and after desperate resistance from the enemy captured all that is left of the famous White Château, which for years our soldiers have watched through hidden glasses as a far high place like the castle of a dream. By midday our men were well down farther slopes of the ridge, while our field-batteries rushed up the ridge behind them to take up new positions. Farther north along the shoulder of the Ypres salient our English troops of the 19th, 41st, 47th, and 23rd Divisions advanced along a line including Battle Wood, south of Zillebeke, and now hold all but a small part of it. Meanwhile the Germans are massing troops at Warneton and its neighbourhood, as though preparing a heavy counter-attack, and are shelling Messines Ridge with some violence. For to-day at least, in spite of fierce fighting that must follow, our men have achieved a victory, with light losses considering the severity of their task. The evil spell of the Ypres salient is broken. The salient itself is wiped out, and if we can hold the Messines Ridge, Ypres and its countryside will no longer exact that toll of death which for nearly three years has been a curse to us. The roads and fields are under a glare of sunshine as I write, and down them, through the dust and the fierce heat, come troops of German prisoners, exhausted and nerve-broken, but glad of life. And passing them come the walking wounded who attacked them in their tunnels at dawn to-day and conquered. The lightly wounded men are happy and proud of their victory.
"We New-Zealanders can afford to be a little cocky," said one of these bronzed fellows with eyes of cornflower blue. "My word, I'm glad we had the luck." He was wounded in the foot, but the man just hugged the news of victory. "We shall be no end stuck up," he said, and then he laughed in a simple way, and said, "I'm glad New Zealand did so well—that's natural. But they tell me the Irish were splendid, and the Australians could not be held back. It's good to have done the job, and I hope it will help on the end."
That New-Zealander spoke the thought of thousands who have been fighting in this battle. They have a right to be proud of themselves, for they have broken the curse of the salient and relieved it of some of its horror.
II
THE SPIRIT OF VICTORY
June 8
I have never seen the spirit of victory so real and so visible among great bodies of British troops since this war began. It shines in the eyes of our officers and men to-day up in the fighting zone and in the fields and woods below Wytschaete and Messines, where they are resting and sleeping after the battle, regardless of the great noise of gun-fire which is still about them. Our men have a sense of great achievement, something big and definite and complete, in this capture of Messines Ridge. They knew how formidable it was to attack, and they count their cost—the price of victory—as extraordinarily light. Many brave men have fallen, and along the roads come many ambulances where prone figures lie with their soles up as a reminder that no battle may be fought without this traffic flowing back; but the proportion of lightly wounded was high and the number of wounded amazingly low among most battalions. I met one company of Irish Fusiliers to-day who took their goal without a single casualty and marched into Wytschaete without firing a shot. That was a rare episode. But on all sides I hear astonishment that our losses were so small considering the immensity of their task. It is this which makes the men glad of victory—not having it clouded by such heavy sacrifices of life as in the battles of the Somme. "We got off light," said an Irish boy to-day; "we had the best of luck."
All along the way to Wytschaete, where I went through places which two days ago still lived up to the reputation of evil names—Suicide Corner, V.C. Walk, Shell Farm—and in woods like the Bois de Rossignol, where the death-birds came screaming until a moment before yesterday's dawn, officers and men, generals, brigadiers, sergeants, privates, spoke of victory with an enthusiasm that made their eyes alight. An officer reined in his horse and leaned over his saddle to speak to me. "It was a great day for Ireland," he said. Yesterday another man, with an arm in a sling, also used the words "a great day," but said, "It's a great day for New Zealand." And another officer, speaking of the way in which all our men went forward to victory, English troops advancing with their old unbroken courage in spite of hard fighting through a year of war, said: "This is the best thing our armies have ever done, the most complete and absolute success. It all went like clockwork."
One great proof of victory is the relief of some of those deadly places in the salient under direct observation from Messines Ridge—screens of foliage which I passed to-day are no longer needed, and one may walk openly in places where German eyes had been watching for men to kill for two years and a half. And another proof, written in human figures, is one huge mass after another of German prisoners, a thousand or more in each assembling place in the fields along the roadsides. They were lying and standing to-day in the sunshine, with coloured handkerchiefs tied above their heads, many of them stripped to the waist to air their shirts, some still wearing their heavy shrapnel helmets with sackcloth covering, all drowsed with fatigue and the prolonged strain of our shell-fire, so that they sleep with heads on knees or lying as though dead in huddled postures. They wake at intervals, asking for water, and then sleep again. There are such crowds of these field-grey men that they are astounded by their own numbers, and when questioned speak gloomily of the doom that is upon their rule.